Mexico-born EY partner to succeed Lafayette 'Chip' Harter at Treasury

Murillo's appointment marked a "return" on his part to the Treasury, according to the statement announcing his hiring – a reference to three years between 2007 and 2010 that he spent in the same Tax Policy office. Here, according to his LinkedIn profile, he "help[ed] formulate U.S. tax policy, drafting Treasury regulations and rulings, negotiating U.S. tax treaties and assisting with U.S. tax legislation." 

Murillo, a resident of Washington, DC, was born in Mexico but grew up in Texas, and holds a BBA in Accounting and MPA in Taxation from The University of Texas at Austin, the Treasury statement said.

Harter, Murillo's predecessor, had been named to the post of deputy assistant secretary for International Tax Affairs in 2017, but announced his intention of stepping down shortly after Joe Biden was declared the winner of last year's U.S. presidential election in November. 

He may be remembered by some expatriate and "accidental" Americans for his silence in early 2020, when, as reported, many European banks began warning their dual EU/American citizen account-holders that they faced having their accounts frozen and ultimately closed if they continued to fail to provide these institutions with their U.S. "Tax Information Numbers" (TINs, typically Social Security numbers). The banks said they needed these in order to begin providing them to the U.S. authorities as of Jan. 1 that year, as a new stage in the FATCA enforcement regime, which required this data, kicked in.

Harter is also known in Europe for his role as the U.S. representative at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs, where he participated in negotiations aimed at rewriting global tax rules for digital business models.